The Little Doodad That Turns My Apartment into a Fancy Hotel

This story is part of the Healthyish Guide to Sunday, a compilation of recipes, suggestions, and obsessions to make the first day of the week your favorite.

My favorite part of every night is the moment when I turn on my white noise machine.

It's a small, cute, round, unassuming fellow—a compact white disc in hospital off-white with an o-shaped power button— who sits on the floor near the bed, with an anthropomorphic appearance that makes it seem like it should do a lot more than it does. But I don't need a robot assistant and what the white noise machine does do—the production of whooshing, exhaling nothingness that drowns out the noise from the street below—is more than enough. The sound pads my bedroom like a cotton ball, absorbing the chaos of the world outside ( *whispers*...was this what it was like in the womb?!).

With the white noise machine doing its thing, retreating into my room feels like going on vacation. Something about its consistent comfort makes my bed softer, my pillows poofier, my anxious thoughts duller, the lights dimmer. It makes me feel like I'll find fancy, individually-wrapped soaps in the my bathroom and shampoo and conditioner I can't afford in the shower. Am I wearing worn-down socks or velvet slippers? Is that a small chocolate I see on the pillow? Is sleep within my reach? This illusion is the greatest gift I could ask for from a machine so teeny!

I grew up sleeping with a white noise machine, which my parents purchased when we got a puppy who whined through the night and they didn't want me to do the same. I abandoned the machine during my adolescence and forgot about its existence throughout high school and college, so sleep-deprived that my eyes would be shut before my head hit the pillow. But during my first autumn in New York, when I no longer powered on the window unit air conditioner at night, I realized just how quiet—but also how maddeningly loud—my bedroom (and every single thought in my head) could be. Without the whir of the A/C, there was eery silence, interspersed by shrill police sirens, cars blasting music, the occasional hubbub on the corner, and, come 3 A.M., the never-ending meows of my two cats, ready for breakfast five hours too early.

I bought the compact, one-speed Dohm Uno from Marpac to replace the A/C shhhhhh-ing, unknowingly repeating the story of the company's beginning: Marpac originally branded their white noise machines as "sound conditioners" in 1962, when Jim Buckwalter found that his insomniac wife, Trudy, was able to fall asleep in motels thanks to the lull of the A/C. And while the classic sound of a natural white noise machine is just that—the strum of a diffuse fan—fancier electric models are programmed with ocean waves, tingling chimes, or running streams. Personally, I like the placeless-ness of the white noise: I don't want to be somewhere; I want to be nowhere at all.

Most of the time, when the white noise machine is on, I am not. That, I think, is the whole point. But on relaxing days (or days that are supposed to be), I like to bring my book, my knitting, and some snacks onto my bed long past wake-up time and keep the machine running. A lolling Sunday morning spent in the cocoon of the white noise machine, temporarily tuned out from the chaos of my kitchen sink and world at large, makes it easier to face the loud messiness come Monday.